The Lament of Innocence
by haruharu
Summary: Post Hellraiser 1987, while recovering from the massacre of the Cotton Household, Kirsty Cotton tries to piece together the fragments of a normal life. However when she unwittingly unleashes horror upon a child, she does the unthinkable…. and bargains her soul instead.


I like me some Hellraiser, so here's some Pinhead and Kirsty madness.

This story will be an acclamation of the films, novella, and comic series. Personally I prefer the first film (maybe the second too since Dr. Channard made me smile) while the other films and the comic book series just got… weird. However I don't know everything HR, so constructive criticism and suggestion is well received.

Creative note: In the first film the Cenobites were rather ambiguous. Little could be drawn from them other than that they seemed like otherworldly creatures that appeared to subside within a rather extreme religion based on pain and pleasure. This is how I like to remember the Cenobites and their legacy. Later in the films and comics, it made a turn into the traditional "catholic representation" of Hell and it's horrors. While the original concept of extra-dimensional aliens with bizarre beliefs and laws inspired more interest in me, rather than latter interpretations. So therefore, this will be the nature of the Cenobites within this fic. However do not worry, I plan to play it off within the universe of HR.

–

The Lament of Innocence

Rating: M

Pairing: Pinhead/Kirsty

—

Kirsty pursed her lips as she made broad strokes with her paintbrush. Using a dark wash coupled with vibrant colors, she expressed the quandary of emotions she felt through the disorder of her brushstrokes.

Kirsty frowns as she makes a deliberate splatter of red across the canvas. Her movements are quick, wild, yet clinical and meticulous. She felt a romance in painting, and often found her questing hands at its bristles. It was calming; a retreat from anxiety, and homecoming after another day of half-hearted attempts at happiness.

Although it was her final year, Kirsty was still attending High School. She had friends, many of whom forgave her silence and never asked for reason. Kirsty valued her relationships – they were all she had now – but everyday since _That Day_ , little by little, she'd begun to deteriorate. Like a slow rot, her soul had born a taint that spread from her heart and seeped into her bones. It wearied her breath, dragged her feet.

Her frustration peeked, Kirsty began haphazardly slashing the canvas with jagged, angular cuts. Paint bled from the fabric — colors begetting hues, lines begetting shapes, and when she could no longer bare the pressure anymore, Kirsty screamed out and grabbed for the pallet knife, stabbing it's pointed edge into the soft, cotton flesh.

She paused, bent over, and breathed heavily against the smears of her painter jeans. She held the pallet knife like a tool for slaughter — an object familiar in the grasp of one who slays, rather than paints.

Kirsty felt like a slayer. She felt as if she'd committed murder in this room, but the victims were long since dead – buried under heartache, locked behind fear, but not forgotten — _never_ _forgotten_.

Her breath calm, Kirsty raised her head to meet the terrified eyes of her family, gazing into the horror of their skinless flesh and flayed bodies.

She had committed murder in this room. Three years ago.

Sighing, Kirsty dropped the pallet knife; a veritable, "splat" on the cloth-covered floor, echoing around her. She moved to replace the canvas, when she hears the tale-tell sounds of footsteps shuffling from behind. She turns to see a dark-suited man approach with a diligent walk and a folder held in his right hand.

"Hello, Kirsty," The man greets, "Daddlin' with yer paints again?"

Kirsty smiled. It felt genuine. "Hello Mantarae, and yes, daddlin' away the lonely days."

The dark-skinned man chuckled and sat down on the only seat within the attic space: A rusty old stool with a dirty cushion. A small comfort that Kirsty occasionally indulged, when her jittering nerves didn't demand she fester about the room like an anxious loon. Mantarae smiles at his young charge, and Kirsty felt instantly at ease; the wrinkles in his tan flesh lighting his face and alluding to the harsh summers of a southern upbringing.

Mantarae–Jack was a kind and noble man, one few left in the world. His words were gentle, and his accent as strong and fluid as the strings of his guitar. A man of true passion — the honest kind — not the fabricated, pestilent variety she had become so frightfully accustomed to. Mantarae–Jack was someone Kirsty respected, and was thankful this man was in charge of her Case File.

" —Remind me of your mother. She was always daddlin' away."

Kirsty blinked, and refocused on what the older man was saying.

"Always daddlin' at something, I'd say. Music, art, poetry — your mama was somethin' else, Sweetie."

"Oh? I often forget you knew her in youth," She replies, entertaining the aging man's memories. "Remind me, what was she like? Before she met Daddy, I mean."

The older man paused, considering his words. When he looked at her again, there was something in his eyes, something Kirsty didn't understand. "Your mother," Mantarae began, "She was a beautiful woman. Yer the spittin' image of her, doll. She had a way about her — a grace that caressed her soul with the same joy and serenity that surrounded her." Mantarae shook his head. "Terrible thing, the accident."

Kirsty knew to what he was referring; understood why the memories came, the guilt quick to follow. It was the martyrs cross: remember the dead and bear their sorrow. A feeling she knew all–too well.

Mantarae raised his head and Kirsty could see tears pucker between the folds of his eyes. "I'm sorry Kirsty," He spoke between sobs, "I didn't mean to let loose demons of the past in this room."

A hand came to rest on the man's shoulder, and the old man smiled in return. A moment passed between the two, and just as swiftly as it came, it was gone—replaced with the same silent dread that seemed to surmount within the infamous attic space.

Clearing his throat, the black man stood and gestured to the door. "I suppose it's time. Not polite to keep company waitin', child."

—

"Go Deeper. Deeper."

"I… I can't."

"Yes you can."

"It hurts."

"Kirsty—"

A fist slams on the surface of a wooden end table. The small room wraps around the sound, bouncing off the walls and back to its source.

Kirsty breaths, short desperate breaths as her eyes trace the swirling patterns of the floor rug.

"Kirsty…"

"Shut up!" She screams, hands gripping her jeans. "Don't make me—Please! Don't make me remember."

A sigh. "Kirsty, we've been through this. Many, many times. It's been three years! It's time to push past this; past these emotions."

A pair of glasses came to rest next a glass of ice water. The hand that held them was worn, but not from age. A shadow of a band ghosted around the ring finger, a pale phantom against tan skin. There was dirt under the nails. It bothered Kirsty. For someone who led such a clean and dry lifestyle, Dr. Solomon Bentley — her psychiatrist — always had dirty hands.

The other hand came up to comb through fair hair, teasing perfectly groomed curls— a habit that meant stress or irritation at Kirsty's refusal to "play ball" with the good Doctor. "Kirsty," Dr. Bentley began again, and repositioned his glasses back on a perfectly straight nose. "You cannot expect to live out the remainder of your life in fear, can you? Certainly not." He answers for her. Kirsty frowns, she hated when he did that.

"I'm not afraid."

"Are you?"

Kirsty turns away from her Doctor's pointed look of "Yeah right. When Hell freezes over." Maybe he was right, but it was as equally impossible to admit. No, not impossible, but improbable.

 _Because, if I admit to fear, to being terrified and weak, even for a second… Then THEY will come._

"I'm not afraid," She repeats, then nods her head to confirm the lie.

"Then why don't you want to remember? Why do you continue to talk around or step between the cracks in details? It's time to face your demons and tell me what happened in that house!"

Solomon's voice rang throughout the small space of the room. It sounded desperate, and Kirsty couldn't blame him. She had toyed with him, strung him along, and teased him with the promise of deep emotional baggage. A trauma from which the catalyst was steeped in a scandal of sex, betrayal, and murder. Something a man like Dr. Bentley would swallow whole. The man got off on Phycological damage, it was his kink, his muse, his midnight visitor. Kirsty was just a means to an end. She knew it, and so did he.

In the end, they both just wanted to get off.

With a sigh, Kirsty replied, "It began… with a box."

Dr. Bentley sat back in his leather-bound chair and adjusted his glasses. "A box?"

Gripping the denim of her jeans, Kirsty nods. "—And a man named Frank.

"Frank…" Solomon draws out the name, savoring the taste. "Who is Frank?"

"My Uncle."

"Ah," Solomon nods, understanding, "And his story?"

"Ended."

"Ended?"

Kirsty raised her head.

"He's dead."

A moment passed, and Kirsty felt the air heat, the walls closing, and her heart quicken. When Solomon spoke again, a light caught his glasses, obscuring the eyes from sight.

"How did he die?"

"I killed him."

Solomon smiled.

—

RIIIIIIIIIING

A slam of the front door follows the rain-soaked back of Kirsty Cotton as she escapes the sudden down-pour.

RIIIIIIIIIIING

Inside the safety of her house, Kirsty quickly pulls off her coat and throws it on a couch as she passes into the kitchen.

RIIIIIIIIIII—

"Hello?"

"…."

"Hello? Is this a joke?"

"…."

Kirsty slammed the phone back on the hook. She turned and was about to walk out of the kitchen when—

RIIIIIIIIIIING

"God dammit!" Kirsty picked up the receiver— "Hello?!"

"—Irsty! Can you hear me?" A crackle, the lights flickering. "Hello? Kirsty?"

Kirsty watched as the lights continued to dim and brighten. Another call of her name snaps her out of her trance, "Yes?" She answers.

"Kirsty? Oh good! The phone must have cut out. Damn storm. Weather calls for a clear night, and we get a down pour." The woman pauses, clicking her tongue. "It's like they say: Can't trust anything you watch on TV no more—"

"Excuse me," Kirsty interrupts, "Who is this?" She glances to the lights—their glow steady, unmoving.

Another pause. "It's Martha! Martha Anderson. David's mother?"

"Mrs. Anderson?"

"Yes! Yes!" The woman replied, annoyance radiating from her tone. "Dear girl, try to listen when adults are talking. Anyway, about David—"

"David?"

Martha sighed, tired of explaining herself. "My son? The boy you will be babysitting tonight?"

Kirsty stared at the phone. Behind her a bell rung; the smell of burnt toast quickly following. On the phone, Martha continued to speak, but her voice sounded distant… tunneling.

"Stephinie called, said she couldn't make it. Said' she had 'other plans' tonight. I was real worried… See Herald and I rarely go out… Oh—But then you gallantly volunteered to take her place!"

Kirsty traded the hand that held the receiver, turning around and walking toward the window. Outside a storm raged. "I… I did?."

"Yes you did!"

Kirsty rolled her eyes, remembering fragments of a conversation with an overbearing woman pushing her way into her private life, but nothing about babysitting. "Mrs. Anderson, I don't really remember…"

"Kirsty, please. It'll only be for one night."

Glancing back toward the window, Kirsty nibbled on the pulp of her lip. "What is this about?"

"I just—" Another sigh. "How many times do I have to repeat myself? Herald and I are going to that new art exhibit, you know the one with all the sex, chains and junk? Anyway, David can't be trusted home alone. Can you or can you not watch him for us?" The smell of smoke grows stronger. Outside, the storm rages on. "Really Kirsty," Martha continues, "I do not appreciate the run around this late at night. If you don't want to babysit—say so, and don't pretend to agree to it."

"Agree to it?" Kirsty baulked. "This is the first I've heard of it!"

"Kirsty," Martha sighed, "Do I have to spell it out for you? I had just called, asked if you could watch David, you agreed and then the line cut. Now all of a sudden you act is if you've never agreed at all!" A pause, then a whisper. "Are you sick, dear?"

Kirsty stared ahead, watching the rain fall. Somewhere a smoke detector rang; the smell of ash permeated the room.

"Kirsty? Hello? Are you there?"

"Yeah…" She heard herself say, "Maybe."

At half passed eight that night, the doorbell rung. David Anderson was waiting on the other side.


End file.
